I Actually thought about something like a surge tank before. If you look at many vehicles with submesable fuel pumps in their tanks you will see that the tank is built in such a way that the fuel always runs to the lowest point where the pick up is or some have like a little "canister" around the pickup to trap fuel if the bulk of the fue in the tank moves away from the pick up while driving.

Something that may work well is as follows:

Place the surge tank between the in-line pump fitted just outside the tank and the tank itself. I would also add a small low pressure fuel filter in there as I always do just to protect the moving parts of the fuel pump from abrasive material that will stuff it up. Disconnect the fuel return line from the fuel tank and route it to the surge tank so that return fuel can fill the cannister for the second or two when no fuel comes from the tank.

Does these surge tanks you guys mentioned only have two connections or do you get ones with three connections? I guess a T-piece in the pipe from the tank would also work. Who has a picture and dimensions of these tanks?

Bennie, the ones that Turbo Toys sells definitely has three - I saw it in a friend's BMW racer. Can't help with pictures and dimensions, but phone these guys, apparently they are very helpul. I'm sure they'll give it to you over the phone.

I like this idea and think it is worth investigating. I didn't realise they were a standard offering; I thought one would need to be fabricated. I think Bulldog definitely could benefit from a central bladder ;)

the ones i see on the net have 3 or 4 fittings. 1 bottom for HP pump, 1 mid from LP pump, and a almost on top which is the return from the pressure regulator. the 4th is an overflow on top which runs back to the main tank.

i did see an ad for a high pressure pump with surge tank included. it was from a vw but i have no idea which vw.

read in interesting article bout a guy who made his own surge tank from an inline water filter. yea like the normal ones for the kitchen. he writes it had been running perfectly for 2 years. personally i would be nervous about the plastic becoming brittle over time.

another guy modified a small CO2 bottle...

the one i saw on the turbo's 4Y looked a lot like the 'containers' used on gravity fed spraypainting gun...

I was thinking a little about the installation location. In my case I would like to use the original LP mechanical pump to feed the surge tank, then I can still use the original fuel line, from and to the main tank. I could then possibly install a surge tank on the firewall, only issue may be the heat in the engine compartment. I put together this sketch as a possible layout:

fuel_delivery.gif (4.05 KiB) Viewed 7695 times

Any thoughts on this layout? Maybe placing a heat deflector in front of the tank would be enough, on the 4Y engine layout there is enough space for something like this. The HP fuel pump will then also be out of harms way and minimal re/routing of fuel lines would be needed. I don't like the design of most of the surge tanks I have seen! So maybe fabrication would be the way to go, but could be expensive. In fact everyone I phoned in CT to price one, said 'You looking for what?'.

Oops just noticed I forgot the LP fuel pump 'return to tank', that should feed to the surge tank or back to the main tank, not sure which one though...

i got quote for R850 from a place in PE for making up the surge tank. i worked on 120mm long and a 3" diameter. with 4 fittings. figured i'd mount it on the rear right of the engine compartment. either just next to the wiper motor on the firewall or on the fender side of it.

will either use a "T" piece on the return from the mechanical pump for surge tank return or the 'roll-over' breather from the main fuel tank will have to become my surge tank return

I feel the only problem with a setup like the one you described is that if your LP mechanical pump fails your HP pump is going to be starved (and stuffed) by it as well.

If I were to install a surge tank I would still install it in such a way that you get gravity feed from the main tank. (you can insert a LP electrical pump in between as well if you are scared that gravity alone is not enough but I doubt it would be necessary if the surge tank is fitted low enough.

Hi Bennie and other happy Blue Bull supporters ,
I made a tentative start on the conversion this weekend, I didn't have all that much time... first of all a cleaned the efi bits and pieces, plenum chamber, throttle body, intake fuel rail...

Then today(Sun) I decided to take the carb and carb intake off, what I found was proof that the carb is really not happy:

A pic with the intake removed:

Ok, now the not so nice piece, it appears I may have the wrong exhaust manifold for the EFI conv, the base of the intake is touching the no.1 exhaust pipe, take a look:

Bennie I compared my pic above and the pic you took of Bennie's lux, they appear to be the same, what gives? So do I have to buy a new exhaust manifold?? If so, I will be visiting Rody from PowerFlow.

2 Other things, do you know where I can get the heat shield material you used between the exhaust and efi intake? I have visited a few of our local spare shops and no luck!

Secondly, between the fuel rail and efi intake are 2 spacers on the studs, my setup was didn't have these when I bought it, in fact the one stud is also missing, but that not a problem. Do you think I could buy these spacer(may out of rubber, i guess) from Toyota?

Yes I know the Stormers lost as well... All of the above work was performed under the influence of 1 Castle Lite...

Bretton

Last edited by Mr_B on Sun Mar 02, 2008 6:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Nope, you do not! We found the same problem, same exhaust manifold as you have. Ignominiously, we towed the now-stricken Bulldog to the closest exhaust shop. They heated the problem area with a torch, and then placed a piece of 50mm (or thereabouts) across the ehaust manifold as a buffer and then hammered the buffer until there was a nice small indentation in the manifold. You do not need to do much hammering, it will not affect the gas flow at all.

Time taken with a gas torch: 10 seconds
Time taken before we towed it there: about half an hour and we got nowhere. (I don't have an Oxy-Acetylene set)
Costs: Nothing, the guy did it F.O.C.

Great thanks Eric, R900 or so saved! I'll take the branch off and have it tweaked down the road. Hmmmm... Midas you say, I'll make a turn there in the morning! I think there's one in Bellville somewhere.

'Wish my exhaust manifold was as nice & shiny as yours appears to be!' - Photoshop can make anything look great... It was sprayed when the engine was rebuilt.

I also need to get the gasket between the intake and plenum chamber, the original is gone... :? I have a gasket paper called 'PowerFlex' which is very resistant to petrol, may try and cut one myself.

snipes wrote:
Secondly, between the fuel rail and efi intake are 2 spacers on the studs, my setup was didn't have these when I bought it, in fact the one stud is also missing, but that not a problem. Do you think I could buy these spacer(may out of rubber, i guess) from Toyota?

After a long wait I have some news again. The bakkie is now running with the optical pick-up in the original dizzy with the Toyota coil, and man is she now running sweet. She is going for her dyno tomorrow.

It took a while to get the optical pick-up (Mr Turbo was out of stock and waited for new stock to arrive from overseas) and then we had to wait for the engineering work to make everything fit into the Toy dizzy.

The kit that Mr Turbo sold us had a little index wheel for the sensor that would clear the limited space between the centre shaft and the dizzy but they told me to "glue" this index wheel onto the shaft with Pratley steel. I did not like the idea and Eric agreed that we would rather have something better made.

I then had little rings made to fit onto the shaft with a indexing key to fit into the existing groove in the shaft. But this meant that the index wheel was now too small and we needed a bigger one. The guy that did the engineering for us made on on a milling machine but we felt that we did not want to take a chance and with it because on its size a tenth of a millimetre could mean a degree or more on the timing, so we had to get another one laser cut. This all meant more time that we could do nothing more that wait.

Well when I finally assembled everything last Wednesday evening I set the pick-up with my eye (they recommend the trigger point must be set to 10-12 degrees before the rotor reaches the centre of the no 1 pin in the dizzy cap to allow the computer to get the signal in time so that it can adjust the timing well enough without sparking off the edge of the rotor ( if you do not understand what I mean here do not worry it took me a while to figure out what they meant too )

When I turned the key what a sweet sound, after standing for 3 weeks, she took on the first swing and that was before I could even set the timing properly. All the icky firing and weak idling was gone. The spark on her is now so strong I can adjust the engine speed down to 400RPM and she still idles away like a purring kitten. In 5th gear I take her down to idling speed and she just keeps on running. I use the brake to take the speed down to about 25 km/h and she just keeps on going.

Bretton who ever told you that the Toy coil is not good enough must come see this one. I set the pugs to 1.2 mm and she sparks like a dream. A friend of my neighbour who goes there often to dyno some cars that he work on, says that on his own Corolla (which has a similar dizzy, only a slightly smaller coil) he runs the plug gaps at 2mm with platinum tip plugs ( I think that is what he said they are called- they do not burn away that quickly with the bigger spark) and he averages 20km/l on the 1600cc engine.

I feel this is a much better conversion than fitting a golf dizzy with an external coil onto the base of Toyota dizzy. This one will be much more reliable and will be water proof as well.

Here are some picturess

The optical pick-up itself was glued onto its baseplate with Pratley steel. Pratley steel is non conductive thus it works perfect to seal of the wiring connections and to keep it all in tact and water out. Also note the holes of the baseplate is slotted to allow the pick up to be moved to adjust the trigger angle as described above. We also had to make a small grove in the coil itself to make it clear the larger index wheel.

Bennie, I wonder how the battery voltage will influence the dyna readings? My battery voltage is a tad low, around 12.3 volts when charged, as I recall, which is low, although it still starts the car after three weeks of standing. But then I suppose with the alternator charging at around 13.5/13.6v (I can't remember if my alternator actually charged higher than that), the voltage readings should be OK. I will fit a new battery sooner than later, if I remember correctly the one in Bulldog is some 3 or 4 years old now.

So our figures are definitely better than what they obtained, and the maximum power is developed at lower revs than in their test. Bearing in mind that the Raider as tested by SA 4x4 had a higher compression ratio than the standard 4Y, I think our figures are excellent!

One thing that I can see is different though, your max usable revs are only about 5000 RPM, you will really have to abuse her to get to 5600 RPM

Schalk also mapped her that the Air Fuel Ratio does not lean out more after 5000rpm as the airflow decreases again after the engine's power peak. The reason is that if someone where to abuse the motor by driving her in that region for a prolonged time and the engine runs too lean (tend towards pinging) the EGT easily shoot up by up to 200deg above normal, which will not sommer happen if the AFR is slightly richer in that region. (The leaner the mixture the hotter the flame) That will definitively prolong the life of your head gasket if the engine were ever to be abused, so now you do not need to worry too much about that lead foot of yours Mr Skeen

We did a fuel consumption test yesterday, before we went to fit the larger tyres which will inevitably influence the consumption negatively .It is a case of you win some you loose some.

With the 245x75xR15 she gave us 7.8km/l. This was taken over 400 something kilos that included about 200 kms worth of driving up and down in Gauteng yesterday morning and then 200kms of open road (about half of that on dual carriage ways) with moderate traffic at an average cruising speed of about 120-125 on the GPS (127-132 on the speedo).

This figure was achieved with the aircon on at all times. I tried simulation real average driving conditions rather than trying to get the consumption as low as possible by driving extremely economical. I just kept a nice pace at all times but never floored him/her (the jury is still out on that one but with the new STTs she is too mean to be a gal) flat foot, as that just wastes fuel.

I did however do some top speed tests. If you are a speed cop you are not allowed to read any further - close this page immediately.

Well I can say that I managed to get her up to 143km/h GPS speed more than once on a straight with not head or tail winds and the ambient temperature of about 25 degrees, If the straights were longer I am sure we can get him/her slightly faster but she takes long to accelerate once going passed the 140 mark on her speedo. At 143 the needle almost touch the 150 mark. It might be a little better if the temperature is cooler, but now with the new 31's it may possibly be a little less. Mmm I think we must do another test tomorrow on our way to Berakah and see

With the 31' STT we played a bit with the IAT compensation to make the mixture slightly richer on the top values as she felt a little sluggish at the 120kmh area with the bigger wheels. It now feels more alive up top again like with the smaller wheels.

The cruising speed on the speedo is now 120-125km/h (118-123km/h true speed) but we suspect the consumption to be slightly higher than before, but what we gained off-road more than makes up for that. Bulldog is now one mean puppy.

With the Idle Control Valve doing its job and we adjusting the Dicktator program to treat the valve a little more sensitive and taking the Target RPM up from 850 to 950 RPM we were able to do just about 80% of Berakah's obstacles purely with the ECU maintaining the "idling" and keeping her going. Some of the ascents we did in second and she pulled herself up at below 500 RPMs without stalling.

Well done with BullDog, I haven't discarded my EFI plans... I will shortly be purchasing a fuel-saver car for my wife to use to work and back and then I will be using the golf, so then I will no longer need to use my lux every day,which in turn means I have the time to fiddle and mod... EFI!

We did a run at Atlantis dunes 2 weeks ago, what a jol. my lux, a super 35" tyred 2.2 efi lux, 2 jeep 4litre sports, a new toy 4l V6, a toy 3l D4D, and 3l tdi isuzu and a 70's landie(which broke down of course... took 2 toys to tow it out )

Hi Guys,
I follwed this forum with great interest as I already got the T-Shirt. I posted a re-count of my experiences trying to fuel inject my 4Y for what its worth.

4Y EFI Conversion Difficulties
I have a â€™94 Hilux 2.2 4x4 Pick Up that I have tinkered on for a few years now. The plan is to equip this vehicle for me and my spouse to go on touring and camping trips in the near future. I have spent some time and money to replace and renew some items on the vehicle. I also fitted a power steering system that has been sourced from a double cab Hilux. I also lost the bench seat and fitted Mazda 626 seats and new carpets. (By the way, the seats might not be the optimum modification as the back rests are quite deep and some leg room is sacrificed for this.)
The next thing I wanted to tackle was the power train or engine. The 4y motor is lacking just a little bit of drivability when cruising at 115 to 120kmh. The throttle response is not quite there as you are have a dead spot just before the 2nd choke opens in this speed range. I looked at a few options, and as I wanted to keep the vehicle as close as possible to standard, I discarded the idea of a 7M-GE engine transplant and decided to opt for an EFI system on the 4Y instead.
Being a very curious sort of person, I already had some knowledge about engine management systems from earlier days building and driving Lotus 7â€™s, so this was going to be a DIY project from the word go. This decision triggered a lot of happenings and frustrations in my life and it ended up with my first attempt being unsuccessful. This is basically a recount of events as it happened.
â€¢ I started of by investigating all the ECUâ€™s available in early 2006. I decided on a XXX2 ECU, (Not a Mr Turbo, Gotech or Dicktator ECU) which was the only system available with an idle control at that time. I new some people that used it with some success and also recommended it. The representative e-mailed me upon request a diagram to directly pick up the signal from the magnetic trigger system and trigger the coil directly from the ECU. (No problems, or so I thought)
â€¢ I procured all the necessary items that I needed, see table below, and was going to do the modification in my 2006 December holidays.
4Y EFI Procurement
Item Price
3YE Fuel Injection Inlet Manifold Complete R 330.00
3YE Exhaust Branch R 300.00
Power Flow S/Steel Exhaust System R 1,350.00
XXX ECU R 2,500.00
Water Temp Sensor R 89.98
Map Sensor (Honda 3N25) R 50.00
2 wire Idle Motor (Kombi 2.5) R 142.50
4 Wire Lambda sensor (Ceradex OS-4000) R 425.00
Bosch HP Fuel Pump (0 580 254 9111) R 926.52
HP Fuel Filter (GUD E18) R 83.35
1m 8mm ID HP Fuel Hose R 31.06
Bosch Crimping Pliers R 214.67
Fuse Box R 39.84
Relays & Holders R 120.60
Terminals, Wire, Sleeving, Fuses, etc R 79.68
Oxy Sensor Boss R 80.00
Fuel Pump Fittings R 120.00
Fuel Pump Suction Hose R 76.06
Fuel Surge Tank R 350.00
Battery Cable & Terminal R 58.73
Cable Ties R 18.38
Spray Paint, satin black & primer R 49.91

TOT R 8,736.28

â€¢ It took me about a week to do the fitting and wiring of the hardware and I was ready to start at last. To my naive astonishment the engine cranked but did not start. After some investigation I found that the ignition and fuel was dead.
â€¢ Following is roughly an account of events as it happened:

o The ECU didnâ€™t pick up the signal at Â±300 cranking RPM. Distributor out, cordless drill spins it at Â±650RPM, ECU picks up signal and trigger the ignition and injectors. A bit difficult to do trouble shooting as I donâ€™t have a scope.
o Now the ECU guy wonders if I must use a pull-up on the magnetic pick-up signal. Did that, no change.
o Local agent 1 said I must fit a TP500; it is an igniter for magnetic ignition pick-up systems. After a dayâ€™s battle I found out the TP500 I fitted was faulty. Replaced it with a new part and started the engine at last. It runs rough with a huge flat spot on acceleration. Canâ€™t set the idle valve properly. Take the Hilux to Local agent 1 for dyno mapping. Local agent 1 barely started with the mapping when the Hilux died. The coil and TP500 very hot. Towed the Hilux back home. Highly upsetting and it only started.
o Electronic Engineer friend says he will build me an electronic circuit to trigger ECU positively. Installed a little PC card in the distributor and started the engine. Unfortunately the timing signal is directly coupled with RPMâ€™s, the more you rev the motor, the more the timing advances, very strange.
o Decided to fit a crank pick-up sensor. The ECU doesnâ€™t see the signal.
o ECU guy knows better, say itâ€™s impossible, they have done a lot of Hiluxes and they all worked. I send the ECU to him to put on his test bench. He sends it back saying nothing is wrong, they donâ€™t even notice on of the signal earths is dead. Great test bench.
o Did some research, spoke to a few guys and decided the answer is to fit a Hall Effect system pick-up in the distributor. Why couldnâ€™t the ECU people say so in the first place? Cost me a lot of wasted time and money. The distributor guy in Egoli did a very nice job and sends the modified distributor back complete with a TP100 with its own heat sink. I canâ€™t wait to fit it.
o Engine starts immediately and runs much smoother. The flat spot getâ€™s fixed with 8.5ms dwell time. I shouldâ€™ve realised this is a fundamental problem; this will come back and bite me later. To my amazement the timing signal is directly coupled with the RPMâ€™s again, the more you rev the motor, the more the timing advances. ECU guy donâ€™t know whatâ€™s wrong. I thinked about hard and long, had an amazing brainwave. Removed the wire from pin 1 on the TP100 to the coil negative. Removed the signal wire from the ECU going to pin 6 on the TP100 and fitted it directly from the ECU output to the coil negative. Voila! It worked; now I am in business, and it is also well into February 2007. I also had no other means of transport to work and had to rely on my friend and wife for said transport.
o I get the engine to run fairly well and make an appointment with a rolling road expert (and Gotech fundi) in Brackenfell. He is a gentleman, he never made a negative remark or jibed me because I fitted this particular brand of ECU, but I could see the pity on his face, he had some bad experiences in the past.
o Everything went well with the mapping till about half way through when the engine developed a slight misfire. Replaced the spark plugs but no change. The Sun Tester indicated the miss is coming from no. 3 cylinder. We decided to call it a day and I must go and trace the misfiring problem. The miss firing gets worse and I barely made home in Somerset West.
o The next day the Hilux refuses to start. After a long trouble shooting process I found the the circuit driving no 1 and 3 injectors is dead. The priming when you switch on the ignition threw me a bit, you canâ€™t distinguish easily between four or two injectors priming. Send the ECU to the ECU guy in Egoli. He sends it back after a week and says he canâ€™t find a problem. Now I have a dead injector driver and a dead signal earth. Great! I am in Somerset West and he is in Egoli, I feel like flying up and ...forget it, I am not going to do it.
o I run into Local agent 2 at a race meeting at Killarney. I didnâ€™t buy the ECU from him but after listening to my problem he offers me his workshop floating ECU for trouble shooting purposes, what a nice guy. I fitted the â€œmore functions ECUâ€ and the engine starts immediately! Local agent 2 also reckons that it would be better to fit an external coil as the internal coil caused the ECU to overheat in the first place, so a red Bosch coil was fitted. The ECU manufacturer claims that the ECU has built-in coil igniters, well so much for that one; the Toyota coil quickly dispelled that as a myth.
o Local agent 2 also took the problem up with the ECU manufacturer and they decided to donate the â€œmore functions ECUâ€ to me.
o Know it only leave me to adjust the idle valve so that the engine donâ€™t hunt when itâ€™s cold, canâ€™t get it right. Coupled to that problem is the fact that I could not get it right to calibrate the water temp sensor, I tried 3 different types, nothing. And the Hilux must still be finally dyno-ed. I also never could find the Lambda sensor to work properly, donâ€™t know why, probably because Iâ€™m not a rocket scientist, who knows.
o The final straw that broke the camelâ€™s back happened one rainy Friday afternoon after work in May 2007. The engine had a serious miss fire and I barely made home. It also did not help to reload the map halfway home. That Saturday morning I started to strip everything out and by Sunday evening I had a perfectly serviceable standard Hilux again.

â€¢ Lessons Learned: I donâ€™t know, never trust a brochure, do your homework better and speak to more people and also try and look closer to actual installations. Make 100% sure you use the right ECU!
â€¢ I have learned a lot from reading this forum and am definitely going for an EFI conversion again, but this time with a Dicktator ECU.

I am sorry to hear about your misfortunes, but at least you have picked up lots of experience on how to do this.

BenHur did my EFI conversion basically between Christmas and New Year's Day last year, which probably was not the best of times to do the conversion because most of the supply shops were closed for the Holidays. Bulldog has travelled some 2000Km since that time without a hitch. As you so rightly state, the choice of an ECU is very important.

I'm sure Bennie will comment shortly on your post when he sees it as he will soon be busy with a few such conversions. My fuel consumption has improved over the normal carburettor system, in spite of Bulldog now having 31" Cooper STT tyres which have a lot greater rolling resistance than the standard tyres. But the power difference is very noticeable and I would imagine Hilux's at the Coast will really benefit from this conversion in terms of better overall performance.

Please post some photos of your Hilux in the "Member's Rides" section.

Yes it looks like you had a horrible experience. Maybe we could touch base when I come/go down to Cape Town for Richard and Bretton's conversions.

Earlier this week when I visited Chris' (Dicktator) workshop to have Louis' ECU repaired. I again saw the small little differences in his design that makes the world of difference out there in the real world. His own TP100 igniters has the casing as its own heat sink, so no external heat sink is needed. On my 7M I too lost a TP100 , luckily at the cost of the installer who initially did my conversion, due to an inadequate heat sink. Chris also bolts the power transistors down on the heat sink where I have seen other units made by XXX (don't know if it is the same XXX that you used, but some of the guys here uses his firing modules, gearbox controllers and ECUs) in PTA who only have the power transistors press against the casing when you assemble the unit. In the latter case you have a good chance that a little stress on the housing may cause bad contact and overheating transistors.

The other nice feature about the Dicktator is that he tries to keep it simple by using only the sensors and stuff that is really needed and omitting the nice to haves like Lambda/Oxygen sensors which adds lots of cost and complexity for very little benefit.

Few things I picked up from your post. Charge time - should normally be 2.5 ms for a coil running 4 cylinders or less for coil on plug set-ups otherwise you will cook the coil. Also connecting the coil neg directly to the ECU will surely cook the ECU if it does not have a built in igniter. (Dictator's Top fueller box has a built in igniter but is not available to for general use and is limited in features i.e. real cheap and nasty - but it still works well for what it was intended.) The purpose of the igniter is to give precise and accurate switching of high currents, so that you do not need to switch such currents in the ECU - keeping high current and heat out of the ECU.

Regarding the pick-up, Chris is still trying to convince me that using a magnetic adapter on a Toyota magnetic pick-up with small tweaks to the system is good enough to run a reliable set-up. We actually had one of my 3Y dizzys connected to his test equipment and turned it with a cordless drill. We actually measured below 180 RPM off this dizzy

He showed me on the scope the wave pattern of the mag pick-up and it is actually not a pure sine wave as we always believed, but actually a funny sawtooth shaped wave. So by measusing the right part of the wave you can actually measure a almost vertical line. I am still not convinced that this set-up is 100% optimal and will not be influaced by trancient noise, but will give it another bash in my next conversion. But yes so far I have see more success with hall and optical pick-ups than with magnetic where I had some interference at certain RPM ranges due to the trancient noice I also struggled with starting if the engine turned too slowly due to low battery voltage.

But Louis also paid R1800 to have his dizzy modified with a hall pick-up at Chris from Toyota Bakkie Spares, only for it to loose calibration as the indexing wheel/chopper was not secured properly with a key to the shaft and it shifted. Now after having it repaired (under warranty) we are struggling to get his timing properly calibrated again and I suspect that trigger pulse is now received at such a place that the firing happens when the rotor is not lined up with its pin in the dizzy cover properly. I guess we will maar have to strip and fix that one ourselves out of warranty to get it working properly.

BTW who is the XXX you refered to, let us know so that the guys here can benefit from your experience.

Hi Guys,
Thanks for your response. I definitely learned a lot about EFI systems and still believe that's the way to go.
Bennie, it would be nice if we could swap notes when you are in CT. Regarding the make of ECU, I feel that's water under the bridge and I don't want to take part in a possible debate with the manufacturer about his inferior product, but if I see you in CT, I will tell you. (Btw, The ECU in question is not a Spitronics either).
Coming back to the EFI, when it sort of worked for a short time, the difference was amazing. The max power wasn't that different I would say, but the throttle response was a whole lot better and to cruise at 120kmh on the N2 was easy, no annoying flat/dead spot at cruising. At that time, driving to the dyno guy, the timing was sort of OK but the fueling was way rich.

Great to have you on the forum! A group of us 4x4 animals were on your side of the world on Saturday, doing the Two Oceans trail at Helderberg Farm, good fun!

On the surge tank issue, Alan has persuaded me that it's really not the way to do, a 12mm pipe feed internally routed to the back of the tank is all that is needed, if you really want to go the surge tank route then rather considered a tried and tested in-tank submersible pump. The only reason I am going with the external pump is serviceablilty on the long road. If the submersible pump packs up it's quite a job to fix/replace, external pump is simple...

Hi Bretton,
Glad to hear you had some fun this past weekend.
Regarding the fuel surge tank, I actually just went the route that the ECU supplier suggested, see attached pdf and photo, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. The advantages that I could think of were the following:
- Due to the physical shape and size of the tank, 3 liter, the HP Fuel Pump cannot run dry in any possible vehicle orientation or incline.
- The HP pump receives a gravity feed due to it's orientation in my vehicle.
- There is no need to fit a suction filter to the HP Pump (which I personally don't like, a HP pump is not designed for that) as the suction filter on the LP pump causes it to deliver always clean fuel to the surge tank.
- The HP and LP pumps are easily replaceable in the engine bay.
- The fuel tank don't have to be filled to more than half always, I am not sure that you could always guarantee that in the bush.
Although there is merit in what the other guys say I will stay with this setup I think.
Regards

Glad you are happy with it. Please post some photos of your engine, always interesting to see the various ways the conversion is done. What brand ECU (Computer Box) did you use? Do you perhaps have a dyna-chart that you can post here?

Bulldog seemed somewhat lethargic even with the EFI, displaying a definite flat spot between around 2500 ~ 3200 RPM. I had thought that the larger tyres (31" Cooper STT) had had a negative influence on Bulldog's performance, as well as the new exhaust system which could affect the original mapping somewhat, so accepted this.

Today I decided to reload the mapping software, using a different laptop. My previous laptop (Acer) used an external USB-RS232 converter but the Dell I now have has a RS232 port on it as standard. I loaded the original map into memory and down-loaded into the Dicktator using the Dell.

What a difference!!

But why??

The Mapping I downloaded was the original Mapping after BD was dyna-tuned, but with smaller tyres (245 Dunlop AT) and with the old exhaust. Now I am wondering whether the external USB/RS232 converter used on the Acer doesn't somehow play around with timing between the PC and the Dicktator, or whether the Acer had ever been calibrated before running the Dicktator software. (Bennie, can you remember if we did this?).

Before running the Dicktator program today I first calibrated the software for the Dell, and after dumping the mapping into the Dicktator, the flat spots I had between 2500 ~ 3200 RPM are GONE! :) :)

My fuel consumption had not previously been up to my expectations either, but I think that this can only improve now.

I drove BD again this morning (as well as last night... :) ) and there is a definite improvement. I have been experiencing problems with the A/C on at idle, the engine used to cut out in spite of running with the Golf Idle Control Valve. That no longer happens and I can idle at lower rpm than before. Once again, it is either caused by a delay in timing when using the USB-RS232 converter, or the fact that the Acer had never been calibrated to run with the Dicktator software (or a possible combination of both) but there is indeed a HUGE difference between the two laptops' programming capabilities. The Mapping info was the same in both cases.

You're most welcome to borrow the Dell to remap Fireball when you come to visit again! It will be worth it!